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Unread 02-11-2012, 07:51 AM
Gregory Dowling Gregory Dowling is offline
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Location: Venice, Italy
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Gail, I'd forgotten that remark of Dick Swiveller's: wonderful. I totally agree with you about Dick Swiveller and the Marchioness. Chesterton (who is perhaps the best critic on Dickens ever, even if Orwell wrote the best single essay on him) says about them:

Quote:
Because they are the two most absurd people in the book they are also the most vivid, human, and imaginable. There are two really fine love affairs in Dickens; and I almost think only two. One is the happy courtship of Swiveller and the Marchioness; the other is the tragic courtship of Toots and Florence Dombey.
I agree with Cally that you have to go to Shakespeare to find a term of comparison. Creating a Swiveller or a Jingle or a Bounderby or a Quilp was like creating a Falstaff or a Pistol or an Autolycus or a Caliban. And so what if he couldn't do a Juliet?
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